The summer after sophomore year I discovered the Quincy quarry.  

It’s prominently featured in Gone Baby Gone, but if imagination is necessary, picture a thousand slabs of rocks, graffiti’d brightly, stacked a hundred and fifty feet high.  The rocks surround a deep pit filled with water, and legend has it, there are hundreds of corpses at the bottom, so deep that divers can’t retrieve them.

A good friend broke his back that summer jumping.  Not that that stopped us.  

When jumping from a hundred feet here’s what happens:

1.  Falling.

2.  Panic.  Why haven’t I hit the water?

3.  More falling.

4.  Greater panic.  I still haven’t hit the water?!?

5.  More falling.

6.  Desperation.  Please don’t let me hit the water!!!!

7.  Hitting the water.

I remember three independent heart attacks with every jump.  No broken backs, but enough adrenaline released to jumpstart a Toyota.

I recently made a big decision. It has not been dissimilar from jumping off a cliff—something I decided to do, while every fiber of my being begged me not to.  Unlike quarry jumping, it wasn’t a bad decision, or a wrong decision, it was just one in which logic and love were in utter discord.

Also, unlike quarry jumping, I’m waiting to hit the water.